23 Days: an excerpt

He and I would kiss on the couch after smoking weed and drinking wine. I drank my first bottle of Margeaux with him, straight out of the bottle. It was 75 bucks back in 1979, steep for my minimum wage budget, and purchased from a corner liquor store that sold it at room temperature on a circular rack with other bottles lesser known. It obviously had not been properly preserved in the coolness of a cave or even a refrigerator. 

However, one sip for even one uninitiated to Dionysus’ treats at the time, I thought the description “liquid pearls” fit. That was my immediate impression and it was divine, almost as luscious as kissing those wine-soaked lips, fleshy, soft, sweet, and conversational. He knew the art of kissing, that it is a conversation not a monologue or a preview to the stabbing penetration to come. He caressed and rested softness on mine, kissed my lips as well as my tongue, no hard sucking or mindless tongue windshield wiping my poor JM switched on whenever we kissed.